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MarinePrime

SLumpEd

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when I try to replace a music file with a .MIDI file and try the level, there's no music playing at all. and when I try to replace the Title screen, the screen in the game is just black. Help please?

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Doom doesn't play midis, it plays mus files which are very much like midis except for some stuff in the header. I'm going to assume that whatever executable you use doesn't recognize your midi files as valid music lumps. Try to hunt down MIDI2MUS.EXE to convert them before importing them in Slumped, or use a port that supports midi.


Now for the screen. Same thing. I'm going to assume you're using a BMP or something else than the original Doom graphic format, and the port you use doesn't handle them. But you're in luck this time because slumped can do the conversion itself, no need to search for an old utility. Just right-click -> convert to -> Doom GFX, and save.

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Doom95 can't play MIDIs, but it'll terminate if one is used. In Doom, and Chocolate Doom, MIDIs that are incompatible with the MUS format (exceeding its 64K limit) won't play. If that is the case, Midi2mus won't help because those MIDIs can't be converted.

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okay thanks for the info, I got the title screen down, but I am having trouble getting midi2mus. I downloaded 1 file of it but when I open it it runs this quick little script and just cancels out..

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Gez said:

Doom doesn't play midis


Actually it can. It's Doom95 that doesn't support them.
And when trying to play a midi in Doom95, the entire game crawls at like one frame per 30 seconds. Yeah, I actually sat there for like 30 minutes waiting for the screen melt to finish. :P

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MarinePrime, one easy way to run programs like Midi2mus is with a batch file in the folder where the program and the MIDI are; a text file using the BAT extension that contains the commands you want the program to do, such as:

midi2mus.exe d_runnin.mid

You then double click the batch file instead of the executable.

EarthQuake said:
And when trying to play a midi in Doom95, the entire game crawls at like one frame per 30 seconds. Yeah, I actually sat there for like 30 minutes waiting for the screen melt to finish. :P

You mean during game play? I just checked on my Windows 98 system, because I didn't recall trying previously and had simply been informed that an error occurs. After testing with Alien Vendetta, I can say that the game works fine and MIDI music does not play back, as MarinePrime describes above, but it takes a bit (a couple of seconds) for each level to load. Apparently the engine gets stalled trying to start up the music, fails because the format is incorrect, and runs the level without it.

Maybe Doom95 responds in different ways according to the system (type of Windows, drivers, MIDI settings, or such).

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Most those programs you can just drag the midi file onto the exe.

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Yeah, good thinking, as long as the program just requires the name of the file to be converted, without parameters (which is the case for Midi2mus), that works.

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MUS uses 16 channels, as in MIDI type 1.

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That's a hardware limit in OPL2 chips (and other such sound chips). OPL3 chips have 18 channels available. I'm guessing that if a MUS lump has more than 8 channels (plus drums) any excess won't play back when using an OPL2 chip.

The MUS format specification mentions channels 0-15, and doesn't say anything of a limit in the format. Additionally, various IWAD tracks exceed the OPL2 channel limit. The wiki editor probably drew inadequate conclusions.

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alright so I tried dragging the MIDI file (D_RUNNIN) to midi2mus and it keeps doing the same as usual, running a command in command prompt and canceling after a second. It does this same thing with every thing I do with Midi2Mus.

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It doesn't cancel after one second, it just runs that fast and exits once its job is done.

If you don't want to run it from a command line, you can create a batch file with this text:

./midi2mus.exe %1
@pause
Put that .bat file in the same directory as midi2mus.exe, and drag and drop a file onto it. It'll run as usual, but this time since it calls the "pause" command after, the window won't close until you hit a key. So if it displays an error message or tells you the file was successfully converted, you'll have all the time you want to read it.

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Oh ok. so after it's done, does the new MUS file appear in the directory that midi2mus is in? cuz I'm not getting anything from it. (this stuff is confusing lol.)

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myk said:

I'm guessing that if a MUS lump has more than 8 channels (plus drums) any excess won't play back when using an OPL2 chip.

I doubt it.

A channel is not the same thing as a voice. OPL2 gives you 9 voices (ignoring the rhythm mode), that is the maximum number of notes you can play at the same time. Even a single channel in MUS or MIDI could use up all the voices by playing lots of notes in a short time.

When a music player runs out of voices, it either cuts off playing notes or drops the new notes (depending on some heuristic). It's usually noticeable though to the listener.

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Yeah, could be, I'm not really savvy about this stuff. Although they both seem to be called channel from the documentation I've found. If so, it would be MIDI (or MUS) channels versus hardware channels. In one case a channel is a series of instructions for an instrument (which may also be chosen for additional channels) and in the other there's a total of channels through which instructions are played. The drums channel in MUS can have information for more than one type of drum. Wouldn't such a use eat up more than one hardware channel during each such instance?

MarinePrime, maybe something is stopping the program from working. The best way to see what is happening is to navigate to the folder you have the program and the MIDI in through the command prompt.

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